This invention relates to a transportation pallet system suitable for transporting and transferring a workpiece, such as a prefabricated automobile seat, to an assembly line in a manner adapted to facilitate computer-controlled automated production.
Mass production of a product from its various component elements is well known, especially within the automotive industry, and typically many of the component elements are prefabricated at one location and transported to another site for final assembly into the finished product. For an automobile seat, it is now common practice for the seat to be completely prefabricated at one location, mounted on a supporting base such as a wooden pallet, transported to the final assembly site, subsequently off-loaded from a transportation vehicle, and transferred to the final assembly line where the seat is removed from the support base and assembled into the final vehicle. Often many of these steps, such as transfer of the support base with mounted seat from the transportation vehicle to the assembly line by a manually operated forklift, are labor intensive.
With the advent of computer-assisted manufacturing systems, wherein steps along the final assembly line are computer controlled, and the growing use of real-time delivery of prefabricated components to the final assembly site to eliminate the need and expense of warehousing such prefabricated components, there has developed a need for a transportation supporting base adapted to facilitate automated delivery of such workpieces to the final assembly line and handling along the line. Such a transportation supporting base must allow precise location of the mounted workpieces for precise handling during the computer-controlled manufacturing process. The wooden pallet currently used as a supporting base for such prefabricated automobile seats generally cannot be consistently manufactured within the precise tolerances required for computer-controlled manufacturing, nor are they easily adapted to facilitate automated delivery to and handling along the final assembly line.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of the present invention to provide an improved pallet system that is particularly adapted for transporting trim-complete automotive seats and is designed to enable computer-controlled automated handling thereof.
In addition, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved pallet system for facilitating automated material handling that is lightweight, durable, dimensionally stable, and yet low in cost.